Across from him Saturday is big, scary Anthony Johnson. The guy who sometimes cuts 50 pounds to make welterweight. The guy who knocks out opponents with head kicks and can wrestle, to boot.

If you ask Brenneman, of course he’s ready. He’s been competing against those much bigger and more intimidating guys for quite some time, and this is just an extension of that.

“My entire career was going up against these Big-10 studs who were basically men, and I was a boy,” Brenneman today told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio).

Brenneman (14-2 MMA, 3-1 UFC) and Johnson (9-3 MMA, 6-3 UFC) meet in the co-main event of UFC on Versus 6, which takes place Saturday at Washington, D.C.’s Verizon Center. The event’s main card airs live on Versus, and preliminary action streams on Facebook.

Brenneman went through his first David vs. Goliath phase during his collegiate wrestling career at Lock Haven University. He chose not to go crazy with the weight-cutting and hence was undersized at meets. Not much has changed in his career as a mixed martial artist. You won’t see him suffering like UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo to make his contracted limit. Instead, he’ll train with bigger guys and get used to their strength. At his home gym, AMA Fight Club, he’s regularly grappling with partners in the range of 200 to 210 pounds.

So as big as Johnson is, Brenneman’s not too worried that he’s the smaller guy come fight time.

“I’m guessing he’s not going to be more than 200 pounds when he steps in the ring,” Brenneman said. “It’s going to be something I deal with.”

That’s the physical part of the fight, and there are the usual proclamations from “The Spaniard” about improvement in training camp. Johnson is looking to keep the fight on its feet and knock him out, and a big part of his success will come down to how he’s able to avoid those laser-guided strikes and, ideally, take the fight to the ground, where he has an advantage on paper. But there’s also the public part of his job Saturday, which involves the expectations he’s created for himself in fighting someone much more well-known.

Brenneman, you see, wasn’t supposed to be here. Three months ago, he was supposed to fight T.J. Grant on the preliminary card of UFC on Versus 4 a short drive from his hometown of Hollidaysburg, Pa., in Pittsburgh. Scores of his friends had shown up. When Grant got ill and was forced to withdraw from the fight, he was ready to dole out some bad news. Then onetime middleweight challenger Nate Marquardt was not medically cleared by the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission, and the UFC asked him to fight Rick Story in the co-main event.

Story had been on a run, and Marquardt was reinventing himself as a welterweight. The winner could be a few steps away from a title shot.

Using the wrestling he’d been toiling with since age 8, Brenneman stole the day by outpointing Story. Suddenly, he was a prospect in the welterweight division.

If Brenneman wins on Saturday, he could be maybe two or three fights from a title shot, if you subscribe to linear thinking in the UFC matchmaking process. That’s a heady place to be in such a short period of time, and many a UFC fighter – Story, for one – has lost his footing on the cusp of a big opportunity.

The stakes are not lost on the Pennsylvanian.

“That catapulted me into the spotlight, but if I can’t win this fight, then I’m right back out of the spotlight,” Brenneman said.

Once again, he has to find a way to buck the odds. If he hadn’t done it so many times before, he might be falling apart. As it stands, it’s just the usual impossible obstacle. There’s nothing more to do than to charge ahead. He may not be as big as his opponents, but he has a heavyweight’s will.

He finally got to show that against Story.

“A lot of people were surprised at that win,” Brenneman said. “I was not surprised; my team was not surprised. I train with the best guys. I have a great rapport with everyone on my team. So that was just a nice coming-out party.”

MMAjunkie.com Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by Gorgeous George, MMAjunkie.com lead staff reporter John Morgan and producer Goze. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.

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